DELLE ALLI
A teenager’s guide to taking English football by storm in less than 12 months. Next stop: France
Ididn’t realise how good it was until all the guys were talking about it in the changing room,” Dele Alli chirpily tells Fourfourtwo while perched on the edge of a luxurious sofa. The water-cooler moment in question isn’t Netflix’s latest true crime brain-bender – no, he’s talking about a goal. Specifically, the goal he scored against Crystal Palace. Yes, that one.
“Obviously it was a great goal and I’m proud to have scored it, but I was surprised by the reaction,” Alli says with a shrug.
It certainly was a great goal. With Spurs toiling at 1-1, Alli controlled Christian Eriksen’s knock-down header with his first touch, used his second to loft the ball over his own shoulder and the onrushing Mile Jedinak, and then rifled a blistering volley into the bottom corner of the Palace net with his third.
“Me and one of the kitmen were doing a drill where you had to knee the ball over your head and volley it in,” the 19-year-old explains, “so he was trying to take credit afterwards!”
“You can work on your finishing and whatever, but when you’re in the moment it’s all sort of natural.”
Some have called his strike the best goal seen at Selhurst Park since another prodigious English talent made a name for himself by scoring for the away side. David Beckham’s lob from the halfway line against Wimbledon back in August 1996 – four months after Alli was born – planted the 21-year-old Leytonstone lad into the nation’s consciousness. Alli’s goal, coming as it did in the age of videos going viral on social media, instantly made him an internet sensation the world over.
Alli remains modest when asked if his own Croydon cracker was better than Beckham’s. “Nope,” comes the reply, with a giggle and smirk that are fast becoming trademarks.
As alarming as it may sound to older readers, Beckham is no longer the primary reference point for young footballers across England. Becks left Manchester United for Real Madrid when Alli was just seven, and Spain for Los Angeles when he was 11.
“It was always more [Steven] Gerrard and Ronaldinho,” Alli explains when asked which players most influenced him in his even younger days. “A lot of kids my age loved Ronaldinho for his flair – you could see how
“ASA YOUNGER PLAYER COMING THROUGH, YOU GETA LOT OF GUYS TRYING TOKICK YOU. IDON’ T MIND. IT’S PARTOF THE GAME” “Dele stood out because he loved having the ball. He was always trying to do new things”
much he loved the game. I can remember watching videos of him scoring overhead kicks and trying to recreate them myself, but never quite being able to do it.
“Steven Gerrard was someone I looked up to massively. I’d always try to copy him, right down to the boots he was wearing. It was his attitude on the pitch that stood out – you could really see how much he hated losing.
“The moment that stands out is the goal against West Ham in the [2006] FA Cup Final. It was a great moment in a huge game, and a great finish too. It’s one of the first goals I remember seeing.
“I had a picture with him when I was younger, but I’ve never spoken to him. I think he’d probably be the only person that would make me a bit star-struck!”
The carefree showmanship of Ronaldinho and the chest-thumping, never-say-die attitude of Steven Gerrard – fittingly, it’s not a bad way to define the on-pitch persona of a player who may well be world football’s most exciting teenager. Fourfourtwo’s meeting with Tottenham’s No.20 comes less than 24 hours after starring in a 3-0 win at Norwich. Despite playing only 45 minutes of that match, Alli again underlined his importance to Spurs’ push for a Champions League berth by opening the scoring in the second minute, tucking home the rebound after Christian Eriksen’s low strike had been parried by the Canaries’ goalkeeper, Declan Rudd.
The rise has been notably steep. Ten months previously, he had been playing at Port Vale, Fleetwood and Rochdale as his hometown club MK Dons battled for promotion from League One (successfully, as it turned out).
From his humble beginnings in the Milton Keynes suburb of Bradwell, football has always been at the forefront of Alli’s mind.
“My first memory is playing football with all the boys back home in Milton Keynes, outside my old house,” Alli says with a wistful grin. “They used to stick me in goal and just smash balls at me. To start off with, I wanted to be a keeper, but every kid wants to be a striker really, so eventually I moved upfront.
“I also woke up early on Sunday mornings to go downstairs and watch Match of the Day. The first live game I went to was Wimbledon – when they played at the hockey stadium in Milton Keynes – against Chelsea’s reserves. I can’t remember too much about it, though.”
Alli joined MK Dons as an 11-year-old, just three years after the club’s controversial arrival in the town. He turned heads instantly.
“My first real recollection of Dele was a fixture away at Norwich during his first full season with us,” Mike Dove, Director of Youth at MK Dons, tells FFT. “We had some really good, exciting players in that particular age group, but what made Dele stand out was how much he loved having the ball at his feet and the way he was always trying to do new things. He was always doing keepy-uppies or trying little flicks and tricks,” Dove says. “To me that isn’t really showboating. I see it more as players expressing themselves.”
That freedom of expression has clearly had some benefits for Alli, whose approach to the game is akin to the ‘street baller’ commonly associated with the favelas or barrios of South America, rather than the quiet suburban sprawl of Milton Keynes. He’s bold, brash and adventurous. He takes risks and gets fans off their seats.
“Dele started training with the first team at 15,” MK Dons manager Karl Robinson reveals to FFT. “He has always had the ability to affect a game. Every level he’s played at, he’s played the same way, and been able to have the same impact. Not only was he unpredictable in some of the things he’d do with the ball, his work ethic was also phenomenal – he had an amazing ability to get around the football pitch. That’s maybe the thing people don’t talk about very much – his energy is ridiculous.”
The naturally athletic physique helps, of course, but that energy is borne out of an unadulterated enthusiasm for the game.
“I’ve always tried to enjoy myself playing football,” the
youngster says. “Growing up playing a lot of football on the streets or on the courts, the nutmeg was always a thing that a lot of the boys tried to do. I’ve never wanted to take that out of my game. I want to enjoy and express myself, and that’s the way I try to do that.
“I remember, in one of my early sessions with MK Dons, they did this thing on a Friday where you’d vote for the worst trainer. I voted for Darren Potter because I’d nutmegged him in the session. Afterwards some of the boys told me to watch myself the next time we trained, but it was just a bit of a joke.”
The nutmeg has become something of a calling card for Alli. One stat-based Spurs account on Twitter has even been keeping a tally of the teenager’s trickery: at the time of writing, it’s 14 nutmegs (most recently on Sergio Aguero as Tottenham won 2-1 at Manchester City). But with so many red-faced victims to choose from, who is Alli’s favourite?
“Luka Modric – it’s got to be,” he beams, recalling his bamboozling of the Real Madrid midfielder during a pre-season friendly in Munich. “When someone’s got a bit of flair, it feels a bit better to beat them.”
Beguiling a fellow playmaker or a tricky winger is one thing, but what about the game’s brutish defenders and midfield destroyers? Surely there’s a chance Alli could humiliate the wrong player and get a good whack for his troubles?
“A lot of [senior] players have had a little word with me because I laugh quite a lot on the pitch, just because I’m enjoying it. But it’s part of the game and you expect it. I don’t mind people trying to kick me.”
This is clearly a kid who knows how to have fun on the pitch. However, there’s another side to this particular coin. For every moment of magic, every seemingly impromptu flick or trick, there’s a flash of aggression, a glimpse of the fire within. Alli hasn’t been afraid to put himself about in his debut Premier League season, even squaring up to Norwich’s Russell Martin. And that’s the way it’s always been. MK Dons even brought a sin-bin system into their academy training sessions to curb the rookie midfielder’s enthusiasm. Their head of academy coaching, Dan Micciche – who is now working with the FA – came up with the plan and knows Alli better than most, having helped oversee his development from pre-teen to Football League Young Player of the Year.
“I used to get quite angry on the pitch,” Alli recalls of his early days, “so if I made a bad tackle or got a bit aggressive, Dan Micciche would say, ‘That would be a red card in a professional match’, and take me out of the session. That probably calmed me down a bit on the pitch. But I still play with a bit of anger.”
Mike Dove recalls Alli’s early signs of aggression: “The sin-bin system wasn’t just for Dele, but he’s got a competitive nature to him and we had to try and help him by giving him a little more structure and discipline. He had to know where the line was. Sometimes he’d have a little sulk if he didn’t get his way, or he’d be a little over the top with a challenge, so we had to tell him ‘this isn’t acceptable’.”
Although Alli and Dove both agree that the tough love dished out at youth level helped the youngster to keep a cooler head when things started to get heated, it by no means meant that he became a wallflower.
“When I first stepped up into the first team at MK I was flying into tackles straightaway,” Alli explains. “[MK Dons captain] Dean Lewington told me I had to keep that in my game and not shy away from it. It’s not something I’m looking to change.
“As a younger player coming through, particularly in League One, you get a lot of guys trying to kick you. A lot of the senior players told me I needed to be tough.”
But does this mean streak (or ‘devilment’, as Tim Sherwood christened it on Match of the Day) actually give Alli an edge as a footballer?
“You could say that,” Alli muses. “But that’s just me. I like to just go out there and be myself. Sometimes I get carried away with things, but I’m 19 and I’ve still got a lot to learn. [Mauricio Pochettino and I] have had a few chats about it. Hugo Lloris has been a great influence on me at Tottenham and he’s spoken to me about it, too. He told me not to let that aggressive side fall out of my game, so I’m just going to keep being myself.”
Even if he has occasionally sailed a little too close to the wind as far as some Premier League referees are concerned, it certainly hasn’t done him much harm so far.
“AS SOON AS I HEARD SPURS WERE INTERESTED, I DIDN’ T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT TOO MUCH”
Mike Dove recalls a key moment from Alli’s nascent career. “I have a memory of Dele being a first-year apprentice with me and going to an away game south of London to take on a team who played with a really low defensive block,” Dove says. “He was playing deeper in midfield, with acres of space, and I could see there was no challenge for him. He was bored so he started doing things he wouldn’t have done if he was under pressure. That was when I realised we had to challenge him – we needed to start pushing him. I spoke to the first team-staff and said: ‘We really need to push this boy’. It wasn’t long after that he started to train with the first team.”
From that point onwards, Alli’s ascension from youth team to first team came at breakneck speed. His senior debut came in a televised FA Cup First Round tie away to
seventh-tier outfit Cambridge City. He was just 16 years and 205 days old.
“He came on at that age in a game live on television, where we were under huge pressure to avoid an upset, and he played just like he would at the park with his mates,” Robinson tells FFT. By that, the MK Dons boss means the debutant’s first touch as a professional footballer was a cheeky backheeled pass.
“Karl said a few words to me about it afterwards,” Alli chuckles, “but he laughed at the end, so it was all good. Just before I’d gone on, he told me to go out and express myself, and that was how I decided to do it.
“Karl and I still speak quite regularly. I spoke to him recently before they played Chelsea [in the FA Cup]. He’s a great manager and a great person as well. He helped me with a lot of personal stuff. When you’re a youngster it definitely helps if you’ve got someone you can trust and talk to whenever you need to talk – someone to look after you, almost. Karl definitely did that when I was at MK.”
The bond between Alli and Robinson is a strong one, the 35-year-old Scouser proving surprisingly malleable when it came to facilitating his young star’s eventual desire to up sticks and test himself in the bright lights of the Premier League.
“We spoke most days about what was going on – how he was feeling, where he wanted to go, and so on,” Robinson says. “Then, on a Friday night at the hotel before an away game at Crewe – it was when he was starting to get kicked by opposition players and had started to become fearful, possibly for the first time in his life – he said to me: ‘I think this is time to get something done’. I just wanted him to be the best he could be.”
Things moved quickly – a recurring theme in Alli’s development. By the Monday evening he had signed for Tottenham, although he would remain at MK Dons on loan for the remainder of the season – at the player’s insistence, according to Robinson. Alli explains: “My family and my agent, Rob Segal, decided what would be best for me in terms of settling in at Tottenham, and planned it all carefully with both of the clubs. I let the people around me sort those things out.”
Thinking back to a saga that will have been unquestionably alien for a quiet 18-year-old, Alli shrugs. “I don’t really read the papers that much,” he says. “I knew what was going on, but I had great support and they didn’t let me get too carried away with things. Obviously it was hard not to get too excited at times, but I didn’t really want to hear about the interest until it was really serious.”
The interest was not only serious – it was widespread. Spurs faced competition from Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle United and reportedly even Bayern Munich for the League One tyro.
“As soon as I heard Tottenham were interested, I didn’t have to think about it too much,” Alli enthuses. “One of the biggest things about Spurs was the manager. When I was looking to leave MK, I looked for a manager that had the same sort of philosophy as Karl Robinson. As a youngster you’re looking to break through, and moving up to the Premier League was a big step so I knew it was important to find another manager who wasn’t afraid to play youngsters in big games.
“You can see the number of young players that [Pochettino] has brought through at Tottenham. I spoke to a couple of the boys there and they all said great things about him. It’s a massive club and I can definitely see us going forward, so it’s a great place to be.” With the distracting business of a big-money transfer out of the way, Alli was free to return to leading his club’s promotion push. Sixteen goals from midfield earned the youngster a place in the PFA League One Team of the Year and helped the Buckinghamshire club into the second tier, much to Alli’s delight. “When I went back, there was a bit of
banter – a few jokes, the kind of thing you expect – but it was really important that I got it out of my head that I was a Tottenham player. I was looking only to help MK get promoted, and thankfully we did that.
“Going back there, staying focused and working as hard as I could was a big thing for me, and a good way to repay them.”
ITHAS BECOME INCREASINGLYCLEAR THAT POC HE T TIN O HASTHE KNACK OF GETTING THE BESTOUT OF PROMISING YOUNG PLAYERS
“To be honest, before he came here, I didn’t really know him,” defender Jan Vertonghen admitted after Tottenham’s 3-1 win over Aston Villa in November, a game in which Alli scored his first goal at White Hart Lane. “But this guy has impressed everyone since the first day we met. I think he has a great future. Hopefully he stays with us for a very long time; he is a great player [and a] great guy.”
The Belgian hasn’t been the only senior member of the Tottenham squad singing his new team-mate’s praises this season.
“I started to follow him [after the transfer] and heard a lot of positive things,” captain Hugo Lloris told Talksport in January. “In the club we only knew that we had a great English talent. But he deserves [the plaudits] because of his mentality, and if he keeps the same spirit he will be a great English player.”
So his new Spurs team-mates are clearly impressed. What about away from the action? Moving from the suburbs to the bright lights of London at such a young age can’t be easy, especially when you’re balancing that with your first season of top-flight football.
Despite admitting he has still never used a washing machine and is no dab hand in the kitchen, Alli seems content with his new life.
“It’s been good,” he nods. “I’ve had a lot of support that has made it easy to make the move, but I still struggle with cooking. I can do scrambled eggs but I have to use the microwave. I plan to learn, eventually, but they’ve got a great chef at Tottenham and he cooks me meals to take home.
“I’ve got a lot to learn – not just on the pitch, but off the pitch as well. Hopefully one day I’ll be the perfect person who can cook and clean and wash up,” he laughs.